1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, a print control apparatus, and an image forming system.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the past, there is an image forming apparatus having not only toners of four colors, i.e., CMYK, but also clear toner which is colorless toner including no color material. A toner image formed with such clear toner is fixed onto a recording medium such as a transfer sheet on which an image is formed with CMYK toners, and as a result, visual effect and tactile sense effect (which will be referred to as surface effect) are achieved on a surface of the recording medium. Depending on what kind of toner image is formed with clear toner and how it is fixed, different surface effects are obtained. There are surface effects such as one that simply gives gloss or one that suppresses gloss. A surface effect given to the entire surface but also a surface effect given to a portion of the surface and a surface effect to apply texture and watermark with clear toner are sought for. Sometimes surface protection is sought for. There are some surface effects that can be made with post-processing by dedicated post-processing machines such as a glosser and a low-temperature fixing machine other than fixing control.
For example, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2009-58941 discloses a method of changing the glossiness in accordance with how clear toner is placed. Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2010-152129 discloses a method of changing glossiness in accordance with the number of times fixing process is performed. As described above, gloss control methods of changing surface effect by improving the fixing method and how clear toner is placed are already known.
However, with the conventional glossiness control method described above, when the same type of surface effect is specified in overlapping areas or adjacent areas such as premium gloss and premium matt, the surface effects of the regions cannot be distinguished from each other, and therefore, there is a problem in that the surface effect of any one of the areas cannot be emphasized as compared with the surface effect of the other area.
In view of the above, there is a need to provide an information processing apparatus, a print control apparatus, and an image forming system that, even when the same type of surface effect is specified in adjacent or overlapping areas, the surface effect of one of the areas can be emphasized as compared with the surface effect of the other area.